


brighter in the dark

by cartographicalspine



Series: The Meek [9]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Claustrophobia, Deep Roads, Duelling, Fear, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 12:25:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16264163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartographicalspine/pseuds/cartographicalspine
Summary: The secretive Inquisition team, which doesn't actually officially exist, faces the Deep Roads for the first time, officially. It goes as well as expected.





	brighter in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Fluff time with all my Inquisitors-who-were-not. Featuring Zhisafal Adaar, Matrada Cadash, the lovely, delectable, outstanding, ever-breathtaking-- okay, okay, Evanuna Lavellan. Sheesh. And my Trevelyans Three.

"The most curious thing about the Deep Roads is not their depths or extent, but how bewilderingly high their ceilings are.”

Zhisafal Adaar glanced down at her dwarven companion, watching her hooded, pale hazel eyes gaze wonderingly in the general direction where they all assumed the ceiling was. Down here, it was too dark to tell what they were looking at.

Behind them, the Herald’s breathing became shallower and more hurried despite Matrada’s blithe observations. Evanuna abandoned her pen and journal and knelt at the boy’s side, nothing but large glowing eyes and soft whispers of Elvish, to no avail. He sounded close to sobs now, barely clamped down and quivering.

Zhisafal strode with sharp, echoing steps over to the nearest wall and tapped it briskly, catching the attention of everyone in camp.

“I agree, Cadash, and it is sound construction.” Feeling his eyes on her, she made a fist and slammed it with all her strength against one of the columns, making fissures in flesh and bone rather than stone. “Ah. Just as expected. Very firm. Very unmovable.”

A startled burst of watery laughter, and then the boy was on his feet and in front of Zhisafal, cradling her hand in his own. “You really shuh...shouldn’t do that, Safa.”

Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply and let a wave of cresting magic swell up and over her swollen knuckles and throbbing wrist. Green and blooming renewal, it soothed and washed away the angry hot pain, turning it to pleasant coolness beneath his warm hands. Making a show of testing it out, she clenched and unclenched her hand to his satisfaction, until it was obvious that it had healed perfectly.

“Thank you, Erzi,” she said with a slight, measured bob of her horned head. “I don’t know my own strength sometimes.”

“You don’t know how to throw a punch, either.” Evanuna gave her an impish grin from beneath her crown of braids, idly brushing back the little cloudlike curls that escaped to frame her dark, heart-shaped face. “Yes, I said it.”

“What is it you are trying to say, Lavellan?” Zhisafal tossed her own silvery plait over her shoulder in feigned annoyance, and the elven woman played to it, and Erzi’s smile grew wider. “For a self-proclaimed poetess, I find you in lack of the words you so attempt to master.”

“Alright, now you’ve done it,” Evanuna said, leaping to her feet and brandishing her chewed-up quill like a sword. “Cadash, hold me back.”

Matrada took her place on the pile of bedrolls in the center of camp, fishing out her linguistics tome to skim through instead. “No.”

“Alas! Fine, faithless sister. Erzi,  _lethallin,_  witness me!”

“Ignore this fool elven woman,  _imekari.”_

“Aeducan’s beard, someone let me read in peace.”

Erzi’s quiet, breathy laughter echoed in the chamber as the dueling pair danced around, Zhisafal meeting Evanuna’s thrust and parry with the occasional toss of her horns, and even Matrada peered up from her reading to watch with reserved amusement.

“What has happened to my ace team?” Marlise and Ara Trevelyan had returned from scouting with their dwarven guides, and the Lady Inquisitor had a teasing twinkle in her eye that betrayed her delight over displeasure. “Am I not to leave you for two minutes without—?”

She gestured vaguely in Zhisafal’s and Evanuna’s general direction and shook her head.

“—you know what? I am  _not_  asking.”

“Mack, Molly, I’m sorry. It was my fault.” Erzi flushed and looked away apologetically. “It was so...the lights were...I couldn’t breathe.”

Ara came up behind him and placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders gently. “Our guides say we’re long due for sleep. Do you think you can try?”

“I...yes, Mack.”

But his small, meek agreement didn’t satisfy Zhisafal, and it didn’t satisfy his older cousin. Ara exchanged a look with her and with Evanuna, who winked her acknowledgement and adopted a higher-pitched, indignant tone when she next spoke.

“Hold a moment!” She stalked over to the Inquisitor, planting her hands on her hips and scowling. “My pride is wounded, my clan disgraced among multitudes. Fen’Harel laughs at me from the shadows! My duel! Inquisitor!”

Marlise gave her a mirthful look, ignoring their guides impatient and bemused stares respectively. “And what shall soothe those wounds, Nuna?”

“A rematch. I declare you my second. Zhisafal, prepare yourself because I have the humans’ Worship on my side.”

Zhisafal exchanged a fresh look with Ara and smiled coolly. “Acceptable. I choose Ara as my second, and the duel in dance.”

Erzi’s face lit up, and Matrada barely held a smile in check as Evanuna dragged her champion forward to meet Zhisafal and her defender in the open space next to their camp. At the elven woman’s urging, they stepped up and began the duel.

“So, Mack, we meet again in bloody combat,” Marlise said as they circled each other with an amusing amount of tension for the terms and goals of their “duel.” Her green eyes danced as he took her hand in his and bowed deeply, raising his soft blue eyes in turn. “Are you prepared to meet my blade?”

“You forget, dear cousin,” Ara smiled serenely, “that other than this, I have only two other specialties: cake, and a disturbing lack of aptitude for higher-level academia.”

“Ah, but have you forgotten, dear cousin, that I also have only two specialties beyond dance?” Marlise led the way into their first round, a spirited sort of dance from the Free Marches. “Cake, and a disturbing lack of aptitude for higher-level politics. You cannot win, Mack.”

His smile thinned. “We’ll see about that, Molly.”

They danced their way across the Free Marches and Nevarra, into Orlais, and then their hilarious attempts at what was supposed to be a Ferelden jig. By then, Evanuna shoved herself in, a desperate attempt to win her victory, and Zhisafal stepped in as well, unable to concede defeat just yet. Erzi ended up dragging Matrada in, but she only danced with him, sweeping back sleek strands of her reddish bronze hair as it spilled from her upswept twist, laughing as he spun her in a lively sort of waltz that would have put the late Empress and her final masquerade to shame.

It ended only when Zhisafal accidentally caught Ara instead of Marlise in her arms, dipping her champion down in a moment of fervor, and Evanuna triumphantly declared herself the winner by virtue of auto-score.

The biggest triumph, however, was that Erzi slept the rest of their scheduled stop the whole way through.


End file.
